Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade, which was finalized on mainnet late Wednesday, marks the start of Ethereum’s new twice-a-year hard fork schedule.

Fusaka is designed to significantly enhance Ethereum’s scalability and efficiency by introducing PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) and increasing blob capacity for layer 2 rollups.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

It boosts the number of blobs per block gradually in two subsequent “Blob Parameter Only” (BPO) forks. The first BPO fork will take place around Dec. 17, increasing blobs from 6/9 to 10/15 per block. The second BPO fork on Jan. 7 will raise it further to 14/21 blobs per block.

“Sharding has been a dream for Ethereum since 2015, and data availability sampling since 2017…and now we have it,” said Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on X.

Ethereum Core Developer Preston Van Loon joined Protocol Watch founder Christine D. Kim to unpack what Fusaka means for users and projects.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.